This Is the Most Absurd iPad Theft Ever

The woman pictured in that "selfie" shot above is the absolute goofball currently in possession of an iPad belonging to an Arkansas man named Allen Engstrom, and she will make you feel a little better if you've ever had a tablet lifted — and, hey, maybe you can help track her down. Engstrom only knows about this woman because she's been unwittingly posting said selfies to Engstrom's iCloud account. So Engstrom is pushing the photos to Facebook and Twitter to help track down the thief. Well, not exactly a thief. He kind of just lost the thing. Engstrom told ABC 10 News that he left his iPad on a flight from Phoenix to Denver.

About a month later, Engstrom said his wife and son were at the doctor's office when his son held up his iPod and said, "Mommy, what's this?"

It was a picture of a woman on his iPod.

"We finally figured out that must be the new owner of my iPad," Engstrom said

The "track my iPad" application didn't do anything for Engstrom. Neither did physically etching name his name and contact information into the back of his iPad. (That would indicate that it's mysterious and absurd new owner might know it belongs to someone else, and, okay, you could probably call her a thief.) So Engstrom has done the next best thing: viral shaming. He's posted the selfies all over his Facebook account, like so:

Engstrom writes:

Hey cool! This is an actual pic of the wonderful person who stole my iPad. Apparently the pics she is taking of herself are backing up and appearing on my phone. No I'm not kidding, this is really happening

And he's uploaded a few more pictures of late:

One more:

"Thanks to the response from social media users, Engstrom has begun to piece together some details about the alleged iPad thief. For example, she apparently lives in Phoenix and Engstrom now knows her Instagram user name," reports Yahoo's Eric Pfeiffer.

We think you can help, people of the Internet. As the BBC pointed out, Facebook turns our (IRL) "Six Degrees of Separation" into something like 3.74 degrees digital degrees. So basically Allen is about four mutual friends away from his iPad perp. (Or this could be Engstrom playing cool and sneakily plotting his revenge.) And with your help, one man might get reunited with his iPad, or at least track down its selfie-obsessed new owner. Law enforcement optional, but get to work, people!

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